I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990Quotes
The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.
—Anthony Burgess, 1972The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.
—Arthur Miller, 2001Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.
—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.
—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811